Did The Toledo Blade sit on Coingate until after Bush won?

[Algorem]

http://www.clevescene.com/Issues/2006-06-07/news/news.html

By Lisa Rab
Article Published Jun 7, 2006

...According to Tanber, Wenzel was a walking conflict of interests. Before coming to the paper in the mid-'90s, Wenzel had helped run Republican campaigns in Oregon. His conservative leanings were so well documented that the Lucas County Democratic Party dedicated an entire section of its website to bashing him. During his tenure at the paper, his son, P.J., was on the state and national Republican Party payrolls. In May 2005, Wenzel left The Blade to start his own political-consulting firm. Within days, he accepted thousands of dollars to do media work for Republican Jean Schmidt's campaign. (He has since left to become the communications chief for the Zogby polling company in New York.)

The most damning allegation against Wenzel is that he sat on a tip he got in January 2004 from Joe Kidd, a Republican insider and then director of the Lucas County Board of Elections. Kidd was feuding with Noe's wife, Bernadette, the chair of the local Republican Party, and looking to spill some dirt. He told Wenzel that Noe was illegally funneling money to the Bush campaign. But Wenzel never wrote a word of it...

Wenzel claims that he didn't sit on the scoop, but he can't seem to recall exactly when he got it. He told The Blade it was in September 2004. Then he told Scene that the tip was "a common rumor in the newsroom" in the spring of 2004. Later, he recalled "it being a rumor throughout the year. Exactly when, I don't remember." He then urged Scene to refer to The Blade's timeline of events, because he "wasn't paying real close attention."...

Yet none of that explains why the paper let a former Republican operative cover politics in a swing state crucial to the 2004 election. Ten days ago, The Blade was forced to acknowledge many of Wenzel's glaring conflicts of interest. Wenzel even conceded that he had talked to Noe about the possibility of their doing consulting work together...

http://www.toledofreepress.com/

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&tab=wn&ie=UTF-8&scoring=d&q=Fritz+Wenzel%2CCoingate&btnG=Search+News

[aquart]

1. But no one will fire him, right?

Republicans have no honor.

[Kagemusha]

4. They fired an employee making these allegations.

I've no idea what the truth is.

[redqueen]

2. Looks like it, yeah...

:mad:

:nuke:

[blm]

3. Tip of the iceberg - papers all over the country have had GOP operatives

working at them for many years. Heck, the NYT, WaPo, Boston Globe, regularly carried planted articles or held back on stories for deacdes and especially over the last 7 years.

[acmejack]

5. They have suppressed the momentous stories!

That's the amazing part of it! To a real journalist it would be a career maker.

[blm]

6. Seriously - you know, if Bush was as well-liked and respected as corpmedia

claimed all the time, then why did they have to go to such great lengths to do what they did in Ohio?

A healthy presidency wouldn't have HAD to concern itself with suppressing the media, suppressing votes, purging voter rolls, and rigging machines all over the country. They were scared because Dems WERE proving to be the better candidates.

[struggle4progress]

7. bump.